15 Nov 2017

Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu says government has developed a range of policies and invested resources to eradicate poverty, empower its citizenry and provide essential social services to all including vulnerable groups.

Speaking at the second NGO Council Stakeholders Forum, Mr Batshu said Botswana was proud to of her strong track record in democratic governance, macro-economic policy and economic development.

He however said Botswana was still experiencing situations of poverty, especially in rural areas, growing inequalities, and challenges in health and education systems and some bottlenecks in the economic diversification drive.

Minister Batshu noted that Botswana joined the UN family to ascribe to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one of which is to ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’.

“This forum is therefore a strategic platform for government, civil society, private sector and development partners to engage with one another with a view to finding ways to achieve our national priorities and goals,” he said.

He said Vision 2036, which has been anchored around the SDGs, indicates that ‘civil society organisations will be partners and legitimate actors in the national development process’ adding that this had filtered into NDP11, which fully recognises the partnership between government, civil society and the private sector.

In doing this, he said, Botswana has committed to national priorities such as job creation, poverty eradication, increasing education funding, eliminating mother to child transmission of HIV and fighting corruption in all its manifestation.

Mr Batshu emphasised the role played by civil society in shaping development policies in order to achieve concrete and sustainable results, calling for a greater role to be played by the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in displaying more efforts to strengthen their engagement.

He stressed the importance of assessing existing mechanisms for more participation and involvement, particularly of vulnerable communities, in order to be channelled up to decision makers, thus enabling them to take active part in policy development processes that has always been a necessity.

Welcoming the gathering, NGO Council co-chairperson, Ms Monica Kethusegile decried that people confused NGO Council with Boswana Council of Non-Governmental Organisations, which is their sister organisation that sits on the NGO Council.

She said that the NGO Council was being judged negatively for things that are not its mandate and urged the community to appreciate the role and mandate of the NGO Council.

Head of cooperation at the EU, Mr Jocelin Cornet said that the theme of the forum, Leveraging Dialogue and Synergies for Transformative and Sustainable Development, was appropriate, adding thatthe civil society hould  participate meaningfully. BOPA